ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
First astatine-labeled compound shipped in the U.S.
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
Helen Winberg-Wang, Ivars Neretnieks
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 10 | October 2020 | Pages 1553-1565
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1712951
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An experiment with a vertical slot with horizontally seeping water with a dye diffusing from below was performed to help validate and visualize the Q-equivalent model, which describes the mass transfer rate from a source into flowing water, such as that in a repository for nuclear waste. The Q-equivalent model is used for quantifying mass transport in geological repositories. However, the tracer propagated much slower and to a lesser extent than predicted by the model. It was found that the tracer gave rise to a small density gradient that induced buoyancy-driven flow, overwhelming that driven by the horizontal hydraulic gradient. This dramatically changed the mass transfer from the dye source into the water in the slot. For the release of contaminants, this can have detrimental as well as beneficial effects, depending on whether positive or negative buoyancy is induced. These observations led to an analysis of when and how density differences in a repository can influence the release and further fate of escaping radionuclides in waste repositories. This and other experiments also showed that laboratory experiments aimed at visualizing flow and mass transfer processes in fractures could be very sensitive to the heating of the dye tracers by the lighting in the laboratory.